Our company develops a line of products. We sell the same off-the-shelf design to many customers. They all essentially get the same thing: a downloadable product with a certain set of features. But there is always somebody that needs something a little different. That’s when they become “special.”
Developing special features for a single customer can pose special challenges to an off-the-shelf product. This post discusses three of those challenges.
My biggest concern is punishing 99% of the customers with a feature that only 1% will use. Suppose you add a new feature to the product that 1% of your “special” customers will use. The other 99% may not understand it. That’s a bad thing. They’ll think they need to understand it, and will spend time studying it, only to learn that it does not apply. My advice: make sure that doesn’t happen. Bury it where only the most adventurous will find it.
The next concern is maintenance. If you create a new feature for one customer, guess what… You’ll have to make sure it stays working forever. It will cost you money as long as you maintain it. Make sure you get that money up-front, or in maintenance payments along the way.
Have you given any thought to the effect your “special” features have on the rest of the product? In other words, will these one-off features break something else. The more complex a product is, the more likely collateral damage will occur.
The upshot is that special features cost more money than you might think. But you have to do them to gain new customers and satify existing ones. It’s all part of the game. Just make sure you are profitable doing it.
–newshirt